In Any Body, In Any Place
by Kaeneus
Summary: "Some periods of our growth are so confusing or painful that we don't even recognize that growth is happening. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before. "
1. Chapter 1

_"Some periods of our growth are so confusing or painful that we don't even recognize that growth is happening. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before. "_

Alex Danvers had growing pains. She didn't even know it was possible to change this late. She'd figured that after the teen years, more or less, you were who you were. You'd grey out a bit, maybe pick up a hobby or two, but you, the core you, what made you tick, that wouldn't shift again, outside of extraordinary circumstances.

So she guessed these circumstances must've counted as extraordinary.

To be fair, a lot of her life might've counted as extraordinary. By no fault of her own.

It wasn't her choice to take in an alien baby sister, and it wasn't her choice to become attached to said alien baby sister, and it _certainly_ wasn't her choice for that attachment to develop further, to become... what it _had_ became.

Certainty had been pointedly lacking in her life as of late. There was her little crisis about Maggie, and all that that meant for her. But now... even that felt like a precursor, more than anything. It was a strange way to frame it, but Alex had settled on the metaphor of a fighting a henchmen before a boss battle.

It had been overwhelming at first, realising that she liked women. Exclusively. It was something Alex thought she might never adjust to. But she did, with no shortage of help and support from the people who mattered most to her. And now that it was done, and she was out, to Kara and to her mother and to all their friends, even Mon-El, Alex was left with the feeling that all of it was just _too easy_.

No, that wasn't quite it.

It wasn't that it had been easy ( _it wasn't_ ), it was just that something about it didn't feel finished. Some piece in her brain was still unsettled, a brick refusing to fall into place. And it was that feeling, that constant low grade anticipation, that made something about that night just a little _ominous_.

She had had plans with Kara to watch Homeland, but a bank robbery and subsequent hostage crisis has left her put out for the rest of the foreseeable evening. Instead, Alex had started to watch the episode herself, but it wasn't the same without being able to look over and see Kara's exaggerated reaction to every dramatic reveal on the show. She switched it off about twenty minutes in, recording the rest, and vowing to do her best to avoid spoilers.

She picked up her empty glass when she rose from the couch on her way to the kitchen. She set the dish down with the others, about three days worth of pile up, and made a note to get to that... _eventually_. Alex had, could, and would reuse cutlery in necessary.

Alex walked slowly to her bedroom. It was early for her to turn in, but she had nothing left to accomplish that day, so figured a little extra rest couldn't hurt. As part of her ritual, she checked her phone one last time, making sure no urgent news from Kara or the DEO had gone unnoticed. She didn't want to wake up to an apocalypse.

Instead, there was a message from Maggie. She smiled to herself, alone in her room, and sat back on the bed feeling just a little lighter.

 **Have fun with your sister tonight, but I've got dibs on you tomorrow ;)**

Alex typed out a quick goodnight message and set her phone down on the bedside table. On the way to the bathroom, she grabbed a clean set of pajamas to change into.

Alex shut the bathroom door behind herself. Even though she lived alone, she always did. After sharing a bathroom with Kara growing up, that was one habit that Alex didn't think she'd ever get out of. Alex went through her bedtime routine on autopilot, not thinking about what she was doing, not looking at anything, not even her own reflection in the mirror. Her mind was stuck elsewhere, stuck in the thoughts that had been plaguing her for the last few weeks. And, as Alex was slowly realising, for probably much longer than that, too.

It was only after she spit and rinsed out the sink that Alex finally saw herself in the mirror. It was something she'd seen a million times. Alex knew what her own face looked like, and normally, she was pretty okay with it. She knew she wasn't unattractive. She didn't hate herself. She wasn't deformed, there was nothing explicitly _wrong_ with the picture that was looking back at her.

That's why she was so unsettled by the feeling that, _implicitly_ , there _was_.

Alex wasn't sure exactly why the idea came into her head, or why she follow it through with action, but soon she was on her knees with the cupboard under the sink open, rifling through it. She pushed aside cotton swabs and cleaning chemicals and a bobby pins so eroded and rusted by moisture and time they were little more than stains.

It was such an identity crisis thing to do. Alex was well aware of that. A Hollywood go to for 'reinvention'. It was practically a goddamn trope. Still, as Alex tilted her head to one side, and finally saw the glint of the scissors pushed near the back of the cabinet, it just felt like it was an inevitable step.

Alex stood back up with the tool grasped tightly.

With her right hand, she grabbed her hair in a tight fist. With her left hand, she moved the scissors, eyeing herself down in the mirror to try and get as accurate a cut as was possible when your hands were shaking like that.

She closed her eyes when she snipped. When she opened them, there was a twisted brown lock at the bottom of the sink, and her hand itched to repeat the motion.

So she did.

Again and again, Alex held the hair with her right hand, and cut with her left. It was messy, to be sure, but what Alex was going for was so simple that there wasn't really much to fuck up.

What she was going for, quite simply, was short. She had no parameters aside from that, no mental image she was going for. All she knew was that when she had seen herself in the mirror, only a couple of minutes ago, something in her had screamed that the hanging sides of her hair had to go, like her own body was recalling the keratin closer to the skin. A biological impulse.

Alex wasn't sure when she could consider herself finished. She thought she had hit every hair on her hair at least once, even the ones that were already shortish to begin with. Eventually, she put down the scissors when she almost clipped her ear open.

Alex's eyes were focused on the bottom of the sink. Or, since she couldn't see the bottom anymore, she started at the odd pattern of reddish brown dips and curves that obscured it. Her knuckles were turning white around the porcelain.

Alex took one more deep breath before she looked up.

 _"Whoa."_

It was short, alright. Or perhaps it was just short to Alex, who had never gone through a pixie cut phase. Logically, she knew that he phase was completely unchanged, but something about how it was framed now... it felt to Alex as if she was looked a version slightly scewed. A Bizzaro, if you would. Alex had seen her face a million times, at a million ages and half ages and quarter ages and at the fractions between those. She had seen herself smiling in photos, and pissed off in photos, and obviously uncomfortable in photos, and sometimes she saw those things in the mirror, too.

She had never seen this.

Alex felt her heart speeding up, kicked up by adrenaline. Really, she knew there was no reason to be reacting like this. She was alone, in her apartment bathroom, looking in the mirror, but her body was reacting like when she tangled with Red K Kara.

Fight or flight, a basic response. Her body was preparing on instinct, for _something_. The ominous haze over the evening became sharper, more defined. It settled over Alex's shoulders and she tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

Her body knew before she did. It was something like how elephants would walk the same path for a thousand years, or how fifteen million monarch butterflies find their way to California for the winter time, something below the brain but pushing up, something like magnetic fields, something like that. A great migration to a homeland she'd never seen. A brain preparing to accept truth, on the precipice of it, just about ready for everything to fall into place.

She had told Maggie, in the medical room, that she finally 'got herself'. But that had been a lie, hadn't it? Or an exaggeration, at the very least.

Alex could have made the pieces fit, if she pushed hard enough. Or if she stood at a far enough distance, it checked out fine.

But Alex didn't have the advantage of keeping herself at a distance.

Alex tilted her head this way and that, searching for the right angles. Up, to stretch the column of her throat. Left and right, biting her rows of teeth down on each other to observe the effect it had on her jaw. She traced the lines of her face, her cheekbones, her eyebrows, her jaw, and she could have sworn her fingertips burned.

" _Oh god_ ," Alex said, hands back on the edge of the sink, staring dead ahead, into those eyes, the same eyes as always, but _implicitly_ different, too. Alex had looked at this face a million times, in a million ways, but had never seen. But Alex could see, now.

Alex could see himself.


	2. Chapter 2

The morning after, Alex found himself wishing he had missed something important from the DEO. If only Non was up to his hijinks, or Maxwell Lord had rolled out some new plan for domination. That at least would give him something to do. Something else to _think_ about.

Instead, he awoke that morning like he always did. Harsh sunlight poured in from the East facing window in his bedroom and landed right across his eyes, warming the skin and choppy strands of hair that got caught in it.

Honestly, he wasn't even sure how he's gotten to sleep. He didn't he'd be able to, the thoughts playing and replaying around in his head. It was almost an hour of that, Alex in bed, on his back, staring up at the stealing. Every now and then he touched his newly short hair just to confirm that, _yes_ , that had happened and that _no_ , he wasn't hallucinating.

There was so much to think about that Alex hadn't even been sure where to start. He jumped between his childhood, to the way his head felt lighter, to his future, to Maggie _. Oh god, Maggie. What would she think? What would she say? How would she look at Alex differently, if she knew? How could Alex ever tell her this? How could he lie to her about this, either?_

And Alex _was_ lying, now.

His relationship with Maggie had been built on truth. Painful truth, sometimes, but it stood on a foundation of honesty to themselves and to each other, and Alex liked to think that that was what made it _good_.

But he had a new secret, now. And when he'd _just_ gotten rid of his last one.

All of these thoughts run around in his head, burning rubber in his brain. It was only pure physical exhaustion with the aid of alcohol that finally let Alex go to sleep. Even then, it was just for a few hours, much less than the recommended minimum.

Alex finally groaned his way out of bed when his alarm went off. He swung his feet onto the ground and stood up on unsteady legs. He only had one sock on, he kicked the other off while he slept. His jeans were unbuttoned too, and had slid slightly lower on his hips. From here, Alex could see the set of pajamas he'd abandoned on the bathroom floor. After last night's... _revelations_... Alex hadn't even had the energy to undress before he fell into bed.

Standing in his bedroom, Alex surveyed the situation. Clear skies out of the window, the muted sound of traffic drifting up from below. His room wasn't even fact, save for the scissors on the bathroom counter, the pajamas on the ground, and the few stray hairs he hadn't been able to wash away easily still at the bottom of the sink, _everything_ was _exactly_ in the same place.

It was all disappointingly regular.

It felt wrong, for everything to be normal. He felt so different, but the rest of the world wasn't. The basic anatomy of his day hadn't changed. Alex still had work in an hour or so, and he would still have lunch with Kara, and he would still probably end up staying later than he needed to to try and crack some case. All that had changed was that, now, he had to do all of that with the heavy weight of his new secret truth in his chest.

Alex exhaled deeply, and dragged both his hands down the sides of his face.

He didn't know what else to do. So he just...did what he always did.

Alex opened his cupboard and started looking for what to wear. It proved significantly more difficult than it had before.

Up until yesterday, Alex had liked his clothes. Now, standing in front of his open cupboard, dragging the items across the bar with a sharp metallic shrill, he said no to each one. It wasn't that he felt different about the clothes, really, or even that he didn't want to wear them. It was more than the idea of getting dressed like he would, and had, every morning of his life up until then felt ridiculous, given the circumstances.

Things had changed. He had changed. Or maybe he hadn't changed so much as he'd learnt about his changing. But the circumstances then compared to the circumstances twenty four hours ago were so drastically removed that it almost felt wrong to Alex that the world was still spinning along as it did.

He continued to rifle through his clothes, passing on sweaters and pants quickly, and blouses and skirts quicker. Soon, he reached the end of the rack, and stepped back with a sigh.

None of it would do.

The idea of wearing any of it, regardless of whether he wanted to or not... it felt a betrayal. Like Alex would be betraying the new knowledge of himself he now carried close to his chest. He thought about the face he looked at the previous night, the face he saw.

That man in the mirror, he wouldn't wear any of this.

Still, he had to choose _something_.

He grabbed a plan pair of black pants, and a polo to match. Alex lifted his shirt over his head, and that's when the, _other_ , issue became apparent. Just because he had realised he was a man didn't mean his body had agreed with him.

Alex looked at himself in the mirror, but pointedly avoided letting his eyes settle on his chest. He'd have to do something about that, but for right now...

The best Alex could do was to root around for a sports bra he'd outgrown, that fitted a little too tightly. He put it on with some effort, letting out a few huffs and grunts, and looked in the mirror again. It _helped_ , but... he'd have to find something better.

Dressing turned out to be the hardest part of the morning. Alex had a hearty breakfast of a single apple before he brushed his teeth, staring himself down again. In the light of the morning, his hair looked worse. He wasn't a hairdresser, and he _was_ working under _stressful_ conditions, so Alex supposed that was to be expected.

Alex still liked it though. He liked it despite being well aware it was a bad haircut, uneven and choppy and bound to result in _thousands_ of split ends. He was sure he liked it more than any haircut he'd ever had. _Imagine_ how he'd feel if it actually looked _good_ , too.

Alex found a beanie stuffed at the back of his drawer from two christmases ago. It had a weird pattern on it, but it would have to do. He pulled it on, covering just the tips of his ears.

Alex returned to his room and checked his phone. The usual notices he got in the morning (the weather that day, a reminder that he had a date with Maggie) and a text. From Maggie.

 **Morning beautiful.**

Yesterday, he would have smiled at that. Now, Alex just worried his lower lip, and stuffed his phone in his pocket without sending a reply back. At least he hadn't actually opened the texting app, so there wouldn't be a read receipt for Maggie to confront him about.

Alex put on his shoes that he'd taken off near the door to his apartment. Those were black, too, completing his head to toe look. Before he left his apartment for work, he took one last look in the full body mirror in his room. He turned, a little left, a little right. _Good enough_.

And he walked out of his apartment, and into the real world, for what might've been the first time.


	3. Chapter 3

Alex couldn't stop fidgeting with his beanie. Before last night, his nervous tick had been fidgeting with his hair, pulling and twisting it and pushing it back behind his ears. Now that that was no longer possible, Alex wondered what new and strange behavior would arise to take its place. He couldn't always be wearing a beanie, but he supposed for now, tugging and twisting the wool and picking at a single loose strand would have to be his outlet.

He kept one hand, his left, on the steering wheel. He only needed one hand for this route, one he'd driven every day for the past three years since he started working at the DEO. Alex was fairly certain he could drive it on muscle memory alone, with his eyes screwed shut. Not that he would ever want to try. Text and driving was out, too, and Alex had set his phone face down in the tray to stop himself from being tempted to glance down at it. His job was dangerous enough, no need to add risk.

All the aliens and criminals he fought at the DEO, could you imagine if he died in a car crash? No thank you, that'd just be _embarrassing_.

He pulled into his normal parking space, the one that literally had his name on it. He could read the plaque as he pulled in: **MS A. DANVERS.**

 _Right._

Alex shut off his car. For a few moments, he just sat still in the driver's seat, sure that he could feel the heat rising from the engine. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with hsi thumb, and with his other fingers reached up to pull the beanie lower on his forehead.

Alex gave an unsteady breath, and got out of the car.

He caught his reflection in the driver's mirror. His hair was entirely hidden, not a single reddish brown strand showing. To anyone who didn't know what had happened last night (which was everyone except himself, really) he would just look like he'd tucked his chin length hair back into the beanie. Or at least, that's what Alex hoped they would assume. He didn't feel ready to answer any questions about it, even the most innocent, soft ball, easy to bullshit ones. Alex felt that anyone asking him why he'd cut his hair would make him cry.

In the mirror, the basic facts of his face were the same. He had the same lips, same nose, same structure. A machine would find him still identical to the photo on his all-purpose, shapeshifting DEO identification card. So would a stranger. Actually, so would everyone else in the world.

Except for him.

Alex knew better.

He squared his shoulders and his jaw, and headed through the glass double doors. Immediately, three people greeted him in short succession. People knew who he was here, and that could be both a blessing and a curse, at various times.

Right then, he definitely thought it was the latter.

A certain level of anonymity would have helped him feel a lot more comfortable. It wasn't that he was self-conscious, really. He had worked hard on that, he had confidence, he could talk to people, he was comfortable giving orders, normal. But this was not his normal situation.

At least no one seemed to be looking for any longer than usual. They all focused on his face, and not on his headwear, and no one seemed to look at him with a question in their eyes.

Factually, he knew it was unwarranted, but Alex felt more unsure walking through the DEO then than he ever had, even on his first day when he was lost in its many halls, and Hank had to find and come rescue him three times in one hour.

Alex entered the command room slowly, scanning to see if Kara or Hank were already there. He relaxed slightly when he saw that the lower level members of the DEO were there yet, no one he was particularly close with. Vasquez was at her station, as always, but she was too busy with the complex points of data on the screen in front of her to even notice that Alex had entered.

Everything seemed to be in order there, so Alex quickly moved on to his lab. He didn't particularly like the idea of idling around the command center, one of the busiest rooms on the building. Anyone could just walk in and see him, and while he hadn't attracted any undue attention yet, beanies aren't _exactly_ part of the standard DEO uniform. Particularly slightly worn ones with wonky white snowflakes on the rim.

Once he was in the safety of his lab, Alex pulled out his phone. There was one from Kara, which he opened quickly, telling him that she'd be at the DEO at about ten, permitting no impromptu invasions came up between now and then.

Alex glanced at the clock on his phone. That was only twenty minutes ago.

Alex's heart sped up. That morning, he had just gotten ready and gone to work as almost an automatic response. He _didn't_ miss work. He came in even when he really shouldn't, when he was so sick he was likely to infect the whole office, just because he felt he had to. He liked the routine of it. It might have been strange, given that his work involved hunting down aliens, but it was such a stable part of his life, and he craved the stability.

He hadn't even _considered_ not coming in to work.

But now, with Kara's arrival imminent, and Hank's no doubt lurking just around some corner... he started to consider it.

Some people stayed home for reasons far less significant than this.

And yes, Alex had never been one of those people. And yes, he didn't particularly want to be. But perhaps the situation called for a day off.

Alex drummed his fingers on the top of some ten-thousand-dollar medical machine. He didn't notice until it beeped aggressively at him that he'd accidentally turned it on. He jumped back, and quickly turned it off.

Yeah, maybe he should leave.

He might even be able to get some shopping done.

Alex couldn't suppress his smile at the thought. He wouldn't even know what he was looking for, or where to start, but he saw an image of himself standing in the men's section, sliding through the racks one item at a time, and his heart sped up like it had last night.

Except this time, he wasn't afraid.

He was _excited_.

Excited to go _shopping_.

Alex wasn't the type to get excited about shopping. In fact, quite the opposite was true. He'd probably needed new clothes for a little while, but had been putting it off. Both Kara and Maggie had bugged him about it when he showed up in the same red sweater for the tenth time that month.

He was sure glad now that he hadn't taken any of them up on their offer. This seemed like the perfect reason to justify a little bit of a shopping spree, and if he had recently spent his money on stocking up a _female_ wardrobe, he would've been _pissed_.

Alex didn't like to spend a lot of his money. He wasn't really rich, but his work at the DEO and his frugal habits had left him with enough to be relatively sure that a single shopping spree wasn't going to bankrupt him.

He had enough money, and a couple of spare hours, and a fairly decent reason to justify it to himself. Alex Danvers was ready to _splurge_.

Well, perhaps not _splurge_ , exactly. But by the very low bar he had set for himself, comparatively, that wouldn't be difficult to do.

He shot off two texts, one two Kara and one to Hank, informing them that he wouldn't be in today. He tried to phrase it nonchalantly, to try and raise as little suspicion as possible, but he'd only know if he'd been successful if Kara didn't end up confronting him about it.

He grabbed his bag from off the back of his chair, and headed out to his car the way he'd come in, with just a little extra skip to his step.


	4. Chapter 4

Alex had been loitering around a coffee shop for the better part of an hour. He wasn't rude about it, ordering coffee after coffee to make sure that the owners wouldn't 'politely' ask him to move on, but he could still feel people starting to notice his extended presence there.

Every time the waitress walked past him, her smiled was pointedly less genuine than the time before. Alex knew it was odd for someone to sit alone in a coffee shop for that long, especially when they were alone, and especially when they kept on looking up at a clothing store across with an expression halfway between hungry and fearful. They probably thought he was planning to rob the joint, or something, Alex realized. _Dammit_.

Alex had soon maybe fifty people enter and exit the store while he'd been watching. Most of them were men, but there had been some families too, and who he assumed were wives or mothers shopping for their sons or husbands. But Alex supposed he shouldn't assume. If he had seen himself walk into that store, Alex realized, he would have assumed he was one of those wives. Alex's coffee suddenly tasted just a bit more bitter.

Still, he realized, that would be a good cover. He'd been unable to enter the store for the longest time, frozen by the thought that someone would confront him about what he was doing. He knew that was irrational - the only interaction he was likely to have inside was with a pushy sales assistant - but that didn't do much to ease the fear.

His eyes read over the bold white letters over the entrance: **TOPMAN**.

 _Top. Man._

He'd thought about those two words so much in the past hour that they didn't feel like words anymore.

It was a men's clothing store, exclusively. Anyone who saw Alex inside would know what he was looking to buy.

Alex had never been inside one. Not that particular chain, or any others men's clothing store, either. The closest he'd come before were a few confused journeys through the men's section and JC Penny's trying to get to something else.

Thinking back, Alex realized that his eyes may have wondered. His hands may have brushed against some of the fabric.

He may have lingered.

Alex wasn't sure how far back this went.

Alex finished the last of his copy and put the mug down more forcefully than he need too. He let out a shaky breath, and rose from his chair. He pushed it back into place, and shot the waitress a final smile, half apologetic, half polite.

He walked across to the other row of shops, carefully navigating the crowd to make sure he didn't bump into anyone else. He stood still outside of the shop for a few moments, and tapped over his pocket to make sure that his wallet was still there.

Alex stepped through the threshold.

Inside, they were playing muted top 40 tuned. Alex half recognized the one that was playing, and was thankful for even that small bit of familiarity in a situation that was so utterly unfamiliar to him.

He scanned the store, on the extremely off chance someone he knew was in there. Of course, there wasn't. Alex suppressed a groan at his own paranoia. He looked again, focusing on the products this time, trying to figure out where the hell to start.

The store seemed to be organized mostly by what the product was; pants against the left wall, shorts on the right, shoes across the middle, accessories near the counter. There were a few exceptions, items groups together in outfits or sales or seasons, displayed with bright signs to highlight whatever special deal they were offering.

He started at the left side.

The pants were all folded neatly in half, and arranged first by color, and then by size in ascending order. There were two rows on the wall, a bottom one and one mounted higher up that Alex wasn't entirely sure he could reach.

Alex started to look at some plain black chinos that looked remarkably similar to what he already had one. Except, he realized, taking it off the hanger and unfolding it...

No, it _couldn't_ be.

He ran a hand across the fabric to confirm his suspicions. Yes, it was true.

These had _real_ pockets.

Pleased by this discovery, Alex inspected the label stuck on the thigh of it. He squinted his eyes at the number.

It was all Greek to him.

Alex realized that had no idea how the sizing worked. He understood the size marking on woman's clothes well enough, and what they meant, but he was utterly confused by this. He frowned and pulled out another pair, chinos in a beige color, and inspected those too. He repeated the action on about five pairs, until he noticed a few trends.

They all had numbers, but they were on a different scale to what he knew. Some of them went up to forty.

His confusion must have been bright and clear on his face, because a cheery sales assistant tapped him on the shoulder a second later.

"Hello Ma'am," he greeted, with a voice that set high in his throat. The skin between Alex's eyes crinkled for just a second at the term, but he relaxed quickly. He knew this kid didn't mean any harm. And he really was a kid, must've still been in high school, with the way he stood slightly hunched forward like someone who had yet to find their confidence. Or who had had it taken from them.

"Can I help you today? Who're you shopping for?"

And there it was. The question he'd been hoping to avoid.

Given that he had been so concerned to it, you might have figured he would have bothered to rehearse a response, to come up with something better than his muttered reply of "Uh, um, for...for my...son..."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he knew he's said the wrong thing. True, he was nearing thirty, but he was nowhere near old enough to have a son big enough to fit into the chinos he still had folded over his arm.

The sales assistant, to his credit, tried to mask his surprise. Alex could tell he was trying very hard not to get fired.

"Well, uhm, do you know what size he is?"

When Alex didn't response for a pause longer than social conduct dictated was alright, the boy tried again.

"Or, could you maybe...guestimate?"

Alex looked around the room light something there might help him. Finding nothing, his eyes landed back on the boy, still looking expectantly up at him. It took him a second, but Alex thought he saw a way to get this whole experience back on track.

"He's...roughly as big as I am," Alex said, hoping the assistant wouldn't think that was strange.

"Oh, okay, so maybe..." Alex could feel the boy actively sizing him up, dragging his eyes from Alex's feet to the top of his head. The boy turned around for a second, facing the rack of pants, and grabbed three pairs of pants in the same style Alex had just been looking at. "Try a thirty-two. Maybe a thirty, if those are a bit too loose on him."

Alex nodded numbly. So that was his number. Thirty-two, maybe a thirty. He committed it to memory.

"Thank you," he said, and gave the boy as genuine a smile as he could smile while he sped off to help another customer.

Alex examined the garments he'd given him.

He realized that he _wanted_ them. He really did. But he'd have to buy them first, and that meant more face to face contact. Even though he'd already spoken to the boy, and it had turned out just fine, somehow actually going to buy men's clothes felt different. Like crossing a line.

In the back of his mind, he knew that his previous thought had probably been correct. Anyone observing would logically assume he was just shopping for someone else, that's what the shop assistant had done.

Still, he was unable that panicked feeling at the bottom of his stomach.

Alex felt sure they could smell it on him. Like somehow his pheromones had changed after his revelation, and he was omitting a subconscious signal that would scream 'WEIRD' at anyone who looked at him.

Alex bit down on his teeth.

He was an _adult_ , goddamit, and this was _his_ money. No one could tell him no. No one could stop him from buying what he wanted to buy.

He fought aliens for a living, for Christ's sake. He could handle _buying clothes_.

He checked the prices, and shrugged. Why not.

He found the same boy behind the counter and paid for all three of the items with his barely used credit card. The boy handed him the pants packed into a bag made of recycled paper, with the stores name printed in cold bold on the side. **TOPMAN**.

"Have a nice day," the boy said, and Alex gave him a final smile as he left the store.

When he stepped back into the wide main pathway, Alex could swear he felt some type of electricity running over his skin, jumping from hair to hair. His adrenaline was high, leaving him feeling like he's just gotten away with something.

So far, he decided, this was the most fun he'd ever had shopping.

Alex glanced down into the bag. So far, he'd only gotten three pants. That did not a whole wardrobe make.

Energized by just how easy it had been, Alex found a wall mounted map of the mall and started to plot his journey. He made a note of every store he was fairly sure would sell men's clothes, and played connect the dots to try and find the shortest path that would get him past all of them and back to the exit. Trying to cover the most ground in the least time. Maybe that was his DEO training kicking in.

Alex set off on his mission, hitting store after store. He learned about the sizing system, what the numbers meant and how they corresponded to the letters. He bought shirts that were remarkably similar to what he already owned, and also a few that were a bit different. He bought a lot of button downs. He's seen how they looked on Jimmy.

When it was all said and done, it was hard for Alex to make it back to his car with how much he was carrying. He had lost track of exactly how much of everything he'd bought, but he was fairly sure it'd be more than enough for now. He'd mainly bought long pants, something about the idea of wearing shorts was off putting to him, in dark colours. Some of the shirts were brighter, but most were darkish, too.

Aside from that, he'd bought a leather jacket that he was fairly sure he'd seen in a cologne commercial, and ten identical pairs of black trunks.

Those were a last minute decision. He hadn't even thought about buying underwear when he set out on his endeavour, but as he was nearing the end of his pre-planned journey, it occurred to him that he was forgetting something.

Those had been the most difficult for him to buy. Alex couldn't help but blush as the clerk rang him up for that one. He was so worried that she would look at him strangely, and he didn't know what he'd do if she did.

But she didn't, and he walked out of that mall with just over a thousand dollars of clothing.

And nobody said shit to him about it.


	5. Chapter 5

Alex carried the bags up to his apartment in one trip. It would probably have been better to take two (he could almost his hear his mother's voice in his head, telling him that he would throw out his back like that. _Who did he think he was? He wasn't his sister, after all_.) but the eagerness to get it all up in his apartment overrode his regard for observation of health and safety practices.

Giddy with the feeling, Alex fumbled around in his bag for his keys. He found them, unlocked his door, and dropped the bags down as soon as he kicked the door closed behind himself. He grabbed the first bag he'd gotten first, the one from TOPMAN, and another one containing three button ups and a maroon sweater. He carried those bags to his bedroom, and sat them down on his duvet. He repeated the process for each of the bags, running between the living room and his bedroom, until every bag had been placed on his bed.

One by one, he tipped each one out, the contents falling onto the bed. He discarded the packaging on the floor, and set about organising the items. Organising his clothes.

And they _were_ his clothes. No one could say that they weren't his. He had bought them. They belonged to him. He had the receipts and everything.

He tried to maintain the shape they had been folded in, but that didn't work for all of them, so Alex did a few hasty folds in the air. When he was finished, he surveyed everything he had.

There was a lot of it, leaving very little empty space on his double bed.

Alex glanced from his bed, to his closet, and back to his bed again.

He wasn't sure that all of it would fit.

Alex walked over to his closet and pried the door open. In a single rough motion, he grabbed the leftmost hanger and dragged it right forcefully, pushing all the other hangars with it and compacting his old clothing toward the right side of the rack .

Alex mentally tried to compare the space he had just created to the clothes on his bed. It might be possible….but it just as easily might not. He looked over to his old clothes, and frowned.

Alex supposed he could throw them out… there was some stuff he hadn't worn in months, that he probably could have thrown out even without the prompting of recent events.

Still, the idea of throwing out his old clothes...Alex wasn't sure if he was ready for that. It felt like a drastic step. Granted, by that definition, cutting his hair yesterday had been drastic, too. But that was different, Alex rationalised. That was driven by some kind of animal impulse. He was sane now, he was back in his own head. He couldn't just throw out three years months of gradually acquired property like that.

Alex flicked between his old clothes, searching for unoccupied hangers. He fished out as many as he could, and put them on the empty space in his cupboard, ready to use.

He started with the things that seemed most important to hang. The button ups seemed easy to crinkle, more high maintenance that what he would usually wear. In the cold natural light of his apartment, and not the bright artificial warmth of the department store he had picked them up in, Alex wasn't one hundred percent sure why he'd decided to get them.

They'd looked good on the mannequin, and they looked good on James, but… both the mannequin and James were, well… They didn't look how Alex looked.

Alex continued in his robotic motion of moving between the bed and the cupboard, hanging things up one after the other. His motions were calm, but in his head, he was spiraling.

Alex hadn't gotten the chance to actually try any of it on. Whenever he'd wanted too, he'd glanced in the direction of the change room and either found that they were gendered (meaning Alex would have to make the conscious choice of which one to use: a choice he was nowhere near ready for yet), or they had a staff member outside who would count the number of items and give you a ticket. Meaning they would count Alex's items. And see what he was carrying, what he was going to try on, what he was _very obviously not_ buying for someone else.

All that meant was that he had no idea how the shirts would actually look on him. There was a part of him that was very eager to find out, a part that jumped every time he picked up and new item, that drew his eyes toward the full body mirror, tried to envision it. But there was another part, equally loud, that was afraid. What if it _wasn't_ good? What if he looked stupid?

So Alex simply continued to fill up his closet with his newly acquired garments, trying not to linger too long on any single item. Now was no time for a movie montage of trying on every outfit he owned. He could do that later.

Another thought crept into Alex's head.

 _When_ would he actually be able to wear any of it?

Not at the DEO, with their uniform. Not when he was spending time with Kara, she knew what he owned and what he didn't. She'd definitely notice, and she'd ask him about it, too. With Maggie, maybe?

 _Oh shit._

Alex froze, hangar half hooked around the steel bar.

 _Maggie._

He glanced down at his watch. He had forgotten _completely_. Maggie was supposed to be coming over to his place that night, and should have been arriving in no more than ten minutes.

Alex started to toy with the edge of his beanie again. He had kept it on the whole day, from when he first put it on that morning, all through his shopping trip, even keeping it on after he was back home safe in his own apartment.

 _Okay, ten minutes._

He tried to gauge how much clothing was still left to be packed away.

 _Yeah, he could manage._

Alex moved quickly to get the rest packed away, mind no longer wondering but rather focused entirely on the task at hand. He wasn't as careful with his actions, in fact he was rather haphazard, and at least one shirt ended up turned inside out and hung up the wrong way in frustration. As soon as the last shirt was put away, Alex closed the doors with what was probably a little too much force.

As soon as that was done, he rushed to the bathroom. Alex whipped off his beanie, and immediately put it back on. Yep, it was still there. He hadn't just dreamt it up. So, Alex had two options: wear the beanie and take the risk of Maggie maybe thinking something was going on, or not wear it and have her _know_ it.

He kept the beanie on as he walked to the kitchen. He opened his fridge to check there was enough alcohol for the both of them. Maggie had said she was bringing take out over, so at least he didn't have to worry about food.

With a little more than five minutes left, Alex cleaned up as much as he could. With only his regular human speed, all that amounted to was throwing away all the empty bottled he could find and brushing a layer of crumbs off of the counter, before he heard a knock at the door.

He allowed himself a few second to compose himself, before he walked over to open it. The door swung over, and Maggie was standing on the other side, two pizza boxes stacked on each other in her hands. Alex couldn't help but notice how reminiscent this scene was of the one just a few weeks ago, when she'd shown up the his apartment after thanksgiving and decided that whatever was building between them, she wanted to see how it went.

He opened the door wider for her, and stepped out of the way so she could walk in.

"Hey Maggie," Alex said as she walked past him.

"Hey Danvers," the detective leaned up to plant a kiss on his cheek. Alex closed the door once they were both inside, Maggie already setting the pizzas down on his coffee table.

Once she'd sat down, she looked up at him, and patted the seat next to her.

"You just gonna stand there?" she said.

Alex returned an unsure smile and a chuckle he hoped didn't sound nervous. He started to walk toward the couch.

"And she's awake!" Maggie joked, flipping open one of the pizza boxes. As Alex sat down, she pushed one box closer to him.

"By the way," Maggie said "What's with the head wear?"


End file.
